Annoyances in film and TV drama

Although I do not set out to find fault, I find there
are things that jump out at me when they are wrong and
this can be annoying all round, especially when easily
avoidable. Unfortunately, when I have become absorbed in
some drama, thriller or adventure story on film or TV,
the presentation of a glaring error becomes a huge
distraction to whatever is going on and spoils it. I
recognize the efforts made to get things right in period
drama, and I recognize that it might not bother other
(perhaps most) people, even had they noticed the problem
in the first place. Even so, I think the things I notice
to be wrong are so easy to avoid that there is little
excuse. I am sure that in most cases the production team
would have wanted to get these things right if they had
had the opportunity.

When I refer to period drama (or whatever term is
appropriate) I mean the twentieth century, or the
period I and my parents knew. No doubt horrors are
perpetrated in drama relating to earlier periods but I
know rather less about the detail so am unable to
comment.

What I set out below is not a complete list of
'avoidable errors' but are those that came to mind when
I decided to write them down. No doubt I will add to
them. Perhaps others will contribute to the list too. If
this assists some research assistant avoid an error then
the job will be done. I appreciate that sometimes errors
are known about and overlooked in favour of heightening
the sense of drama. I have no truck with this, which
feels like lazy script writing (please do not mention
the word artistic licence!).

Telephones

In period drama, telephones will usually be of a type
that has a dial and a bell. These perfectly standard
features seem often to defeat the most basic research activity
and are so often got wrong that comment appears
necessary. I may classify the errors as follows.

Bells

Incoming calls are indicated by means of a bell and
this arrangement is often wrongly portrayed.

During the first half of the century the telephone
instrument did not incorporate a bell and so a separate
bellset was required. In most houses telephones were
installed in the hall (often next to the front door), from
which point the bell could be heard all over the house.
The telephone would have been on a hall table or possibly
a shelf, whilst the bellset would have been fixed to the
wall nearby, normally fairly high up. We must remember that making calls was
expensive and were correspondingly short so the hall was
perfectly satisfactory. In offices (where in most cases
there would have been far fewer phones than we would see
now) bells might be on the wall or might be bolted to the
underside of the associated telephone to form a kind of
base unit, and the designs allowed for this.

From the mid-1950s the telephone bell was usually
included integral with the telephone, which had
necessarily to be of a slightly larger design. In most
homes the telephone would still be in the hall, but would
not need the separate bellset.

These are examples of typical equipment. On the left is a 200-type telephone typically
found in homes and offices 1930s-1955; this type did NOT
have an integral bell. In centre is a bellset, usually
mounted high up on a wall in hall or office and used in
conjunction with 200-type telephone. Occasionally the
bellset is actually mounted underneath the phone to form
a base. On the right is a 300 type telephone that
incorporated an integral bell. This was found
1930s - mid 1960s, at first in offices then from late
1930s also in homes. Most of this equipment was black,
but ivory was also supplied and (more rarely) red or
green.

It was certainly not unknown to have a telephone installed in a room (lounge, study or
bedroom, for example), but because of the extra cost of rental
this would usually have been in the better-off homes. In
the period when telephones did not have bells the bellsets
were still mounted in the halls from where they would have
been audible throughout the house. Exceptionally a second
bellset might have been installed, to be heard upstairs in
a large house, for example. At that time the Post Office
rented, installed and maintained all the wiring and
equipment so you did as they said.

It was really only from the early 1950s that telephones
with integral bells became common in domestic premises
and, as already noted, these did not require a separate
bellset. It therefore follows where there were two (or,
rarely, more) telephones of this type on the premises,
they would ring simultaneously. (The models with bells
were available from the mid 1930s but were at first
intended for offices and whilst by no means unknown in
domestic premises this early it would have been unusual
until the early 1950s.). The new era plastic telephones
that began to be installed from the early 1960s, and all
equipment that followed, had integral bells (or some other
kind of sounder, of the kind found in a trimfone, for
example).

There is more that might be said but I will just
observe that in multi-occupancy houses (of which there
were lots) it was not unusual for the hall telephone to be
connected to a coinbox mechanism so that the user paid for
the call at the time. This would have been of a similar
type to that used in telephone boxes at the time. In the
1930s-early 1960s period it would have been a black button
A and B box where the money had to be inserted before
dialling, and after that the grey type where you put the
money in when the call was answered. Anyone could answer
an incoming call.

From the film director's point of view there are two
obvious sources of error.

The first is to use the wrong sort of telephone prop
at the wrong date. The second is where the earlier
200-type telephone is used in a room setting and the bell
sounds as though it was in the same room. It would not
have been, it would have been in the hall and would
obviously sound distant. Since for many years phones with
and without bells looked completely different this error
is easily avoided.

Dials

Telephones
did not originally carry a 'dial' because subscribers
would ask the operator to connect calls. From the mid
1920s the telephone system began converting to automatic
operation and by the late 1930s the largest cities and
towns had been converted, the process being substantially
completed by the end of the 1950s. Automatic operation
required a dial telephone so subscribers could indicate
the number that was wanted.

On old telephones (pre 1960s) the dial would have been
one of two types. In most places these bore only numbers, set behind
the finger plate, in black. Only in Britain’s largest cities (London,
Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh)
did dials ALSO have letters (in red) behind the finger
plate; these enabled the first three letters of exchange
names to be dialled in addition to the number required. Later telephones all had dials with
numbers and letters as subscriber trunk dialling became
possible (allowing subscribers to dial any number). Note
that it was only in recent times telephone users became
'customers'; before that they were 'subscribers'.

Prior to the 1930s, it was not unusual in rural areas
for telephones to have no dials and the operator was
reached merely by lifting the receiver. A rapidly
diminishing number of exchanges of this type survived
into the 1950s.

Of the various errors committed in films the most
common is to see a lettered dial being used on a phone in
some remote village. This is just wrong. Another error is
to show the dial label (the information in the centre)
showing the 999 emergency service information at a period
when the 999 service did not exist (see later).

Long Distance calls

Until the 1960s it was not possible to dial trunk
(long-distance) calls directly, they had to be connected
via an operator and at busy times you had to request the
call and the operator would call back when the trunk
call could be established. What constituted a trunk call
varied depending on where one was, but it would be safe
to assume anything over 40 miles would be one, and
sometimes less. They were very expensive and made
sparingly. Old films observe this but modern period
pieces do not always get this right and even imagine
that in the 1950s you could dial anywhere. You could
not. By the way, if you were using somebody elses phone
it was quite common to ask the operator to make the call
ADC (advice of duration and charge). This meant after it
was finished the operator would call back telling you
the cost, so you could (for example) give the
householder the cash. I have never seen it in films, but
my family frequently used the service.

Call tracing

The command by a police detective ‘trace that call’
was rare and usually didn’t work. Until the 1970s/80s
the automatic exchange equipment was all
electro-mechanical and it was impossible to trace a call
once it had been released, as the equipment maintained
no record. Calls could only be traced by GPO staff
whilst in progress. An engineer had physically to go and
inspect the exchange equipment starting at the exchange
at the receiving end and tracing the connections back
from the called line through successive equipment racks.
Only if the caller initiated the call at the same
exchange (very unlikely) would GPO staff be able to
trace the initiating line quickly (ie within a minute or
so). More likely the staff would identify the call
coming in from another exchange and have to contact
staff there to continue the trace, and so on. It could
take many minutes and could involve up to three
exchanges, perhaps more. Expecting caller to hang on
while all this was going on was optimistic. Of course
where calls were routed through manual exchanges records
might have been kept or staff might recall it.

In dramas representing anything before 1980s it is an
error to imagine that calls can be traced after
completion and even during a call a complete trace would
be unusual. Nevertheless I have seen a completed
call trace asked for in a period drama, but shouting at
the screen did not diminish the fatuousity of the
request.

Ringing Off

In olden days ONLY the caller could ‘ring off’ and
the line would be held open until the caller replaced
handset. The recipient might put handset back but the
line would remain connected and prevent that phone being
used to make a fresh call. So in your period thriller
when the caller rings someone up and is murdered after
half speaking the name of the murderer (and leaving the
handset dangling on its wire), the recipient’s line is
locked and he cannot ring off and call the police! Basic
stuff.

Phone Boxes

In most old dramas where it is necessary to invoke
the support of a telephone kiosk, the wrong sort is
used. From the mid 1930s virtually all kiosks throughout
the country were of the standard kiosk No 6 design (the
red ones with large rectangular glass panes and small
panes either side. These had the King's crown on the
faces of the roof (invariably painted red - this gold
thing is a new fad that seems to have been done about
2012). New boxes had Queens Crown from mid 1950s. Note
that the doors had very strong self-closing mechanisms
so you did not find them with doors open unless someone
was actually jamming them open (despite some dramas
showing boxes with open doors). This type of box is
represented by the one on the right in the
photo below.

However so many dramas show the kiosk No 2, an
earlier and much larger design where there are rows of
three nearly square glass panels along each face. These
were made in relatively small numbers and from 1925 most
of them were used in London with odd ones in certain
other large cities. They never appeared in country areas
or small towns, where only K6 designs are found.
This
older type, the K2, is represented by the box on the
left, below. It ought not be so hard to get this
right.

Other annoyances include dramas where some victim is
dumped in some country road and finds a phone box, used
to ring someone up and say they have been kidnapped (or
whatever) but do not know where they are. Every phone
box has a label inside giving its exact location and its
number (near the vanity mittor they were fitted with).

Use of the 999 system can be problematic in dramas.
It only came into use in the London area in 1937 and
Glasgow in 1938 and was not widely available until 1948.
It could only be used in areas with automatic telephone
exchanges so in rural areas callers had to go via the
operator. Before 999 was available everyone had to go
via the operator although certain telephone boxes had an
emergency button wihich obtained an operator on priority
basis. Emergency calls could be made via Police
telephone boxes and in earlier days street fire alarms
were available which, when operated, sent a coded signal
to a fire station indicating which alarm had been
operated so the crews knew where to go. Using 999 at the
wrong date or in wrong place is not unusual in films.

Directory Enquiries

Where phone books were not available for the area
required recourse was had to directory enquiries and it is
quite my experience that this service was used quite
often. It was an entirely free services as the enlightened
management in those days considered that letting you have
the number would allow you to use the service and generate
traffic and revenue. It is only since privatization that
we have had to pay for it on the basis that you could not
provide competition for such a service if British Telecom
were offering it free. The outcome in my case is I will
not now use it on principle and find some other way of
communicating, or not bother. The point of mentioning here
is that I rarely see the service used in films but my own
experience is that this free service was widely used.

Policemen

A Shortage of Policemen

I make no comment about portrayal of modern police
officiers but I must shout out about those portrayed in
period dramas. You do not have short policemen. Until
the 1980s all police forces had minimum height standards
for men (with proportionate body weight) and this was
for practical reasons where officers had to deal with
incidents on their own, without radio backup. No ordinary
police force accepted candidates under 5ft 8ins and many
looked for officers at least 5ft 10in. I note that in
1961 two forces required officers to be at least 6ft.
The height requirement was dropped by most forces during
1990 but they were still fully in force at recruitment stage
in 1988 (the restrictions then included minimum heights
for women officers, but these were set four inches
shorter than that for men). It therefore follows that
until at least the mid-1990s the majority of police
officers of any experience would have been tall.

Now these police officers did not shrink appreciably
during their police service, reckoned as 30 years, so
even allowing for some shorter officers being recruited
towards the very end of the century the vast majority of
serving police officers in year 2000 would have been of
the traditional minimum height, and before 1990 they
would all have been. In any drama or other film or TV
work before 1990 it is simply not credible to show short
police officers, ie officers below the minimum height
for the force in question. A 5ft 3ins officer in 1960?
Emphatically no! It was a huge feature of the police
service that officers were usually quite well built and
tended to look rather like police officers even in plain
clothes. This could be both useful or a problem,
depending on circumstances, and dramas actually made in
the 1940-60 period rather played on this. I don't care
how good the actor is, if he is short it is just
unrealistic to cast him as a police officer. I am not
sexist referring to 'him' as until the 1970s women
police were in a separate branch with separate duties
and were not placed on an equal footing with male
officers. This changed in 1973 in the Metropolitan
Police but all forces soon fell in line.

Another annoyance, relating mainly to pre-war dramas,
is seeing chief constables getting heavily involved in
cases. Do bear in mind most chief constables were ex
army or something similar and had no police training at
all. Even in the Met, the most senior officers (DAC and
above) were civil servants (technically acting as
magistrates) and were also typically ex forces and had
no police training. They did not even have warrant cards
(they had silver passes instead). It was not 'normal' to
employ chief officers from within the police service
until the 1960s.

Police, in dramas, with long hair is an annoyance. The
traditional police service was always fairly humourless
about uniformed (male) police officers having long
hair. Even in the 1960s/70s when wearing hair long was
fashionable I do not recall uniformed police being
allowed to wear it (though it might have been a tad
longer than military standard). Showing 1960s period
films with uniformed policemen with hair significantly
longer than traditional didn't happen, despite what is
seen in 1970s cult thriller TV where sometime hair
exploded from back of helmet. Emphatically no!

Use of the two tone horn or siren is very irritating.
We see drama scenes of police cars turning up to crimes
still in course of execution, at night, with sirens
screaming. NO. You do not advertise you are turning up
to a crime scene in a manner where criminals can hear
you coming a mile away and run off. Moreover why are
lights and sirens being used for non emergencies, like
taking an arrested person to a police station when there
is no compelling need for speed? Get an adviser.

Crime Scene Investigators

This is an area where there is so much wrong that I
can hardly even begin to criticize. Suffice to say that
scientific investigation of crime was rather limited until
the late 1950s when police and home office laboratories
became available and scenes of crime officers (generally
specially trained detectives) were employed to collect
forensic evidence and get it to a laboratory. The problem
in dramas is that the four basic skills (photography,
fingerprinting, evidence collection and pathology) are all
muddled up. In larger forces these were separate
specialist areas whilst in smaller ones there was some
combination. However if you imagine your pathologist (who
would by no means always attend a murder personally) is
the chap you want to give you an opinion about handwriting
similarity, or a paint match, or a rare kind of soil found
only on the west face of a particular Pategonian mountain,
it is a delusion from which you need urgently to be
disabused!

Moreover this 'I'll just pop into the lab and see how
they are getting on' stuff needs to be placed in the
realms of fantasy too. In most of the UK the laboratories
could be between 50 and 100 miles from many police
stations and dealt with cases on a kind of production line
process (there were only eight laboratories covering the
whole country in 1961). Not only was it impractical to 'drop in' but even
had you done so you might not have been made all that
welcome and there was no guarantee that the scientific
officer dealing with the case was even there. Moreover the
laboratories were required to function as centres of
independent 'expert witnesses' and there were protocols to
be observed lest it might be thought the independence of
the scientist was being influenced. I know, I worked at
one.

And why is it that the senior officer (never ever
first at the scene, which itself odd) always
manages to turn up as the photographer (sometimes more
than one!) is cluttering up the scene taking meaningless
photos of nothing in particular as some kind of pantomime
act? We can all see it is a crime scene without this going
on. Could we not be just a bit more imaginative? I won't
dwell on the arrival at the crime scene to see the set
entirely occupied by uniformed police standing round doing
odd things in strange locations and obviously there to
give atmosphere. Six or more officers? In the country? No
obvious reason for them being there? No van to bring them
there? Really?

May the Force be with you

My next grumble about portrayal of police is that many
in film production teams seem unable to grasp that there
are lots of police forces and that they do different
things in different ways and wear different uniforms. In
the twentieth century you could actually see the uniforms
(not then hidden by body armour and dayglo jackets) so
differences between forces were more obvious. Before 1974
there were more forces doing things more differently, and
before 1964 there were even more forces doing things even
more differently (there were until that year 164 county
and borough forces in England, Wales and Scotland).. Most cities had their own force and
areas outside the cities had county forces. This just
needs taking into account when showing police officers
moving about.

Local insignia were important symbols in
those days and many police foces used their own. I am
afraid I have seen various dramas which have used police
vehicles used for movement of prisoners bearing just a
crown: these were only used by Metropolitan Police,
provincial forces would have had their own vehicles.
Prisoners might be taken a long way in a police or prison
van but actually, until the 1960s when motorways were
opening and railways were closing many prisoners were
moved about on ordinary railway trains accompanied by
police or prison officers who could arrange for
compartments to be used.

Constables very rarely wore peaked caps (usually only
for motor vehicle work) and except in Scotland they did
NOT have diced cap bands until 1972. The City of London
has a different police force that wears red and white
diced bands and very different helmets. On a number of
occasions I see offences clearly committed in the City
apparently being dealt with by Scotland Yard - this would
have been rather unusual.

Forces rarely tresspassed on the area of another except
for routine enquiries and would have let the home force
know if anything more interesting was planned. The
Metropolitan Police did not even have police powers
outside the Home Counties till 1964. What, in Foyles War,
we are doing witnessing the 'Chief Commissioner' in London
wealding some kind of authority over Hastings Borough
Police I do not know; the Watch Committee should have told
him (politely) to get lost. And what is this 'Chief'
Commissioner all about? The title is Commissioner of
Police of the Metropolis. It appears ignorance has created
in more than one drama a police commissioner in various
other parts of the country. Only The Met and City forces
have one, everywhere else it is Chief Constable. This is
all fairly easy to look up.

It appears purveyors of drama do not all know the
railways have their own police (as then did docks and
canals military establishments and so on). Though once
outside forces would be called in to deal with serious
offences this assistance diminished as these special
forces became larger and better equipped and it cannot be
assumed the general police would just walk in and deal
with a crime on railways, or wherever.

Rank Badges

Period dramas or thrillers involving military
personnel are unavoidably going to come up against the
matter of rank. Now if there is one thing that is a
particular obsession in the services it is the matter of rank.
The
uniforms are designed to display the rank of all staff
in a clear and unambiguous way and the correct display
of the correct rank insignia will be unfailingly correct
whatever else might be falling apart The same
type of attention to detail also follows with other
services using badges of rank, ranging from merchant
navy, police, fire brigade and so on.

Knowing this, and knowing how easy it is to check
up, or ask someone, where there is doubt, it is
curious how film makers get it wrong. This ranges
from someone referred to by one rank but clearly
wearing the markings of another, to bizarre markings
that are just careless. Take the image below.

In this instance the actor is dressed as a naval
commander. As we look at him we see the left
epaulette correct (loop at top) but the one on the
right is upside down. There were about ten different
shots of this chap so it was probably done over
several hours of filming during which, apparently,
nobody noticed or cared that it looked a bit odd.
You would have thought the actor would have the
gumption to have queried it. I spotted it instantly
and after shouting at the television watched it with
mounting exasperation that spoilt the programme.
(From an episode of 'New Tricks'). Nobody in the
navy could ever have done this, and even if they had
committed the ultimate crime it would have been
pointed out within minutes. Didn't anyone think this
looked strange?

The recent transmission of 'Death on the Tyne'
fares no better. Various shots of the newly made up captain
show him sometimes wearing four bars each side
(correct), or three bars each side, or sometimes
three one side and four the other. The scenes were
clearly not filmed in order transmitted and someone
was doing a not very good job of correcting this
most basic of errors, but the result is chaotic and
we were taking bets about what his appearance would
show in the next shot, a complete distraction. In real life
rank markings are never wrong, nor should
they be in dramas.

Letter Boxes

Period dramas nearly always get these things wrong.
You get pillar boxes in cities and large towns because
they have very large capacity. Until the present century
(though perhaps during 1990s), outside towns and cities, letter boxes
usually took the form of small rectangular
boxes set into walls or exceptionally affixed to lamp
posts or some other column. Occasionally a box would be
inserted into a square stand-alone brick pillar. You
very rarely saw a pillar box in a rural area or small
town.

Moreover you did not see pillar boxes outside any
post office, even in towns. Post Offices nearly always
had a high capacity letter box built into the outside
wall and generally emptied from within the building. The
situation changed during the 1990s when post office and
royal mail operations became increasingly separated and
post office franchises began changing frequently;
installing a pillar box outside a post office then
became the norm, but this is a fairly recent
development.

The above three images illustrate the type of
letter box likely to be found in towns and villages and
still common there. On the left is a large box inserted
into a post office window. At centre is a wall box
(probably the most common type). On the right is a wall
box installed into a position where there was no wall,
so a brick pillar was built rather than installing an
unnecessarily large pillar box. A smaller type of box
(not illustrated) was also available and attached to
lamposts or telegraph poles.

I cannot say that prior to the 1990s there were NO
pillar boxes outside cities and larger towns, I have no
doubt there probably were. I do say that in villages and
smaller towns prior to around 1990 it was extremely
unusual to find a pillar box and therefore very wrong to
use one in a drama representing anywhere typical. As
soon as I see a period drama of a country village with a pillar box in it the
hackles go up,. It is not how things were and is so
obviously wrong it detracts from the drama.

Courts

Among the things that court scenes devise to bring on
high blood pressure is the sight of a judge wealding a
gavel. Such toys are the plaything of auctioneers (where
the fall of the hammer has legal significance) but have
never been used in English or Scottish courts where a
quick movement of the judge's eyebrows is normally all
that is necessary to maintain order. Nor are they used
by magistrates, coroners or anyone else dispensing
justice. Foreign courts may or may not use them and I
assume research assistants have been contaminated by
USA practice. I understand a gavel may be found at the
Inner London Sessions court where for some traditional
reason it is used by the clerk to warn of the imminant
arrival of the judge, so that the court can stand. This
is hardly typical and the judge doesn't touch it.

Other things that annoy are (1) prosecuting and
defending councel wandering around the court room - they
don't, in Britain, and (2) jury foreman using their own
form of words to announce the verdict - they don't, they
are asked very specific questions by the clerk (not the
judge) and the only words used in the vast majority of
cases are yes, it is, no, guilty or not guilty.

Cars

I do not really have much to say about cars and can
see that more usually than not some trouble has been
gone to in order to have plausible looking vehicles. I
notice that they rarely seem to get any petrol which is
a bit of a mystery as fuel consumption was heavy, but
there we are. If they did fill up I would be having
words about the garage - or shop - I expect.

However, though I realize there are only so many very
old cars available for film work, more attention is
needed to get the number plates right. Three letter
plates did not arrive until 1935 and reversed plates
(letters following numbers) from 1953. Marks were issued
locally for counties and county boroughs and while it
was perfectly possible for a car to be registered in one
place and used in another this was less so for official
vehicles, such as police, which would almost always be
registered locally and usually by the council to which
the force was attached. I appreciate some latitude is
required here but, really, when you have an obviously
Scottish registered police car being used in Brighton it
grates a bit. It would not have happened. Any two letter
mark (or the last two letters of a three letter mark)
with an S in it will be a Scottish registration.

Cars present a splendid opportunity to employ a
seriously flawed plot. The obvious cliche is the
tampering with the brakes, so that on some notorious
hill the brakes fail and the hapless occupents, showing
no intelligence whatever, wrestle with the steering
wheel as the car careers ever onwards. In none of these
contrived dramas does it occur to anyone to change down
through the gears, or even turn off the engine, thus at
least reducing velocity to a speed with which the
terrible plot can keep pace.

Glasses (1) the Wearing Sort

I freely admit to not knowing how film directors deal
with actors who cannot see, by which I mean absolutely
need glasses to get about on the set. Do they wear their
own correctly prescribed glasses on set or is their some
elaborate system for getting over this challenge some
other way? Like not giving them the role in the first
place where one's own glasses would be inappropriate...

However, I am not concerned with this. What wrankles
are actors wearing glasses who do not need to, except
for the role they play. If you look at any normal pair
of glasses, the frontof the lens is curved. If however
you look at an actor wearing fake glasses it will not be
long before you notice that the glass is flat. This is
particularly noticeable in studio surroundings where
there can be awkward reflections all over the place and
it will not be long before the flat-glassed fake becomes
terribly obvious. I suppose someone thinks they've done
a good job providing actor's glasses for some part or
other, but they stand out like a sore thumb and it is
unnecessary. A slightly curved glass of uniform
thickness would behave just like plain glass without
that tell-tale 'I am a fake' connotation.

Glasses (2) the Drinking Sort

Little to say here, except... Why in
some wretched plot or other, in whatever the drinking
establishment might be, do people not finish their
drinks before leaving? I talk not of fights or imminent
imminent arrival of the forces of law and order, or
their crimianl counterparts, I talk just of a group of
people going away. Too often half of them just leave
their unfinished drinks. OK, it can happen, but my
experience is that people pace themselves to finish
together, and eventually down what is actually quite an
expensive purchase. Not in films it seems. Ranckles, it
is unrealistic.

And why do people entering rooms
never close the door behind them?

Railways

Train Station

There are so many railway horrors committed in dramas
that for the moment I will focus on just one,
and that is the term 'train station'. How those words
are used now is immaterial beyond saying that the term
was practically unknown in this country in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries and should never, ever be used in period
drama.

Normal people in everyday speech simply referred to
the word station, and added the station name if there
were a choice. It is as simple as that. In the event
that ambiguity were possible, then the term was 'railway
station' (a station on the railway). There were of
course lots of other kinds of 'stations', such as police
stations, fire stations, RAF stations. Personnel based
at these establishments usually had their own jargon for
these places but used the word 'station' in public, the
context usually making it perfectly plain where was
meant. A policeman might 'invite' you to the 'station'
and there was no doubt about where was meant; if he'd
wanted to take you on a train journey he would have said
railway station.

It must be remembered that (railway) stations often
did more than trains. For example you could deliver or
collect luggage and parcels or consign goods or use the
left luggage office, none of which involved a train.
There was one station somewhere in the west country
where the railway station only served boats. So
in any period drama the word is station or railway
station, but never train station.

I left bus stations off my list (bus stations were
never all that common, and are much less so now). It is
my experience these were invariably called bus stations
by all concerned. I dare say the term was shortened, but
I never heard it myself.

General

I realize in period drama it is progressively harder,
the further back in time is portrayed, to avoid the use of
the railway and that finding facilities to film railways
is challenging, but even so... If we are filming what is
obviously a long-distance main line railway journey to
have a shot of a branch line tank engine wheezing its way
along a single track line at 15mph actually detracts from
the narrative and distracts attention from what is going
on, for it clearly isn't a main line journey.

The fact that it was occasionally possible for engines
to be changed on a journey does not make it mandatory to
do so in drama. It is annoying to see a train hauled out
of a terminal with one engine and in the next shot it's a
different one and on arrival it is yet another, or maybe
the first is back. Sometimes the carriages have
mysteriously altered form as well. With so much effort
gone into getting other details correct can we not fix
this too? Mind you, this is not a new problem. Nothing can
inflame the seasoned pedant more than 1960s/70s cult
television. It was perfectly possible in The Saint to see
three or four shots of a railway journey with obviously
very different trains in each one (sometimes one but only
one will show it as overhead electric), with colours,
locos, number of carriages altering each time. Not one
shot was filmed for the programme, they were all stock
images and used whenever a train was required. Great fun
in a low budget programme that had become a parody of
itself but no good in a serious drama.